Promoting Telecommuting During the Gas Dearth? 138
Oren F. asks: "The President of AeroAstro, Inc., a small aerospace company, has begun promoting his employees to conserve gasoline during these times of high prices by telecommuting to work each day from their homes at least once a week. How is your company responding to the current situation?"
Our company has a more traditional approach (Score:5, Insightful)
A few simple suggestions (Score:3, Insightful)
1: Walk or cycle to work
2: Share a car (Car pool)
3: public transportation : pretty much the same reasons as sharing a car.
4: working from home : The story does mention this , It is a great idea . You save the environment and money .
The Petrol prices here in Germany make me wish I had your Dearth . I always walk to work as if i didn't i would start creating a huge hole in my wallet .
People should be doing these things anyway , but a huge hike in Oil prices is a great way to kick it off .
Re:Our company has a more traditional approach (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:High! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Call me offtopic, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
At the time though, I thought it was a silly purchase from an economical perspective as she only drives 7,000 miles a year. Even now, with the gas prices going up, it's questionable whether the cost differential between that and a nice corolla and the increased risk of abnormal maintenance needs is worth the gas savings. 7000Mi/y / 30 MPG = 233 G. The Prius @45MPG could cover the same distance in 156 G... so you only save 77 G. $144 ($2/G) then, $231 ($3/G) now per year. If you keep the car for 8 years and gas prices remain constant, your only looking at around $1000-2000 in gas savings over the life of the car with low mileage driving patterns.
That said, many people drive 20,000 miles per year, and for them, the 3x ($3000-6000) savings may be worth it or at least around the break even point.
I think my mom bought the car for its environmental friendliness and its coolness factor rather than any perceived economical savings. There are probably other much cheaper more effective ways to help out the environment, but one can hardly argue with the coolness factor.
If you are thinking about doing an engine mod to save money, you should run the numbers before investing $10,000 into your car. In particular, look at the expected lifetime of the car and your cost savings per year. Also, it might not be a bad idea to take into account the interest you could earn on that $10,000 over the lifetime of the car. Eg, if the life of the car is 8 years, and you invest 10K at the beginning, well, that 10K earning 10% interest could pay for $1,000 worth of gass per year ($1,000/yr / $3/G * 30Mi/G = 10,000 Mi/yr... and you get to keep the $10,000.
Better than messing with DST (Score:2, Insightful)
It would make so much more sense for an "Energy Policy Act" from the US government to provide assistance (via tax breaks or assistance) to companies to lessen the weekly energy consumption of their employees.
Allow companies to let their employees telecommute one day a week, for example. Or, help companies move to a 4 day week (10 hour work day, not every employee would have the same day "off").
These are simple actions with an instant benefit of 20% savings in energy.
Beyond that, the government could have linked federal dollars to adoption of "Dark Sky [darksky.org]" ordinances at the state and local level. This would shave a few more percent off the US energy budget by getting rid of over-lighting, trespass lighting (light that unnecessarily spills over to a different property), and useless lighting (light that doesn't actually light anything - ie, heads out to space).
Re:Use a bike (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been cycling to work for the last three months and it has been great. Some days I have to use public transport if the weather is really nasty but I am averaging about 80% of my travel by bicycle.
First of all, I currently drive my car maybe 5 miles a week, as i'm able to use the DC subway and bus system to get to work every day. Worth it in terms of saving on gas/insurance/car wear, but it does mean my commute time is probably at least twice what it would be if I just drove.
That said, it's great that you can do this, but quite a few (maybe even a majority, I don't know exact stats) people in the US either live too far away to get in on a bike/public transport in a reasonable amount of time ( i live 10 miles away from work, and it still takes me almost an hour ), or must take a route that would be life-threatening to ride a bike on (major highways, bad neighborhoods, etc.)
Has anyone considered moving closer to work? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, maybe we don't all need to own a house and have yard. Maybe a condo with a nearby park would also fit your needs and you could live close enough to work to *gasp* walk to work.
Our idea of the american dream has pushed the market to create huge sprawling cities with inadequate public transportation. How much will that house in the outer suburbs be worth when gasoline is $6/gallon? Could fuel prices go higher than that?
I am living my american dream. I bicycle to work in 10 minutes, I don't even own a car anymore, and tomorrow I set off on 280 mile bicycle ride that includes a little over 4000 feet of climb in 3 days. Bicycling has given me a new sense of freedom. I lost 40 lbs in the first 4 months of bicycling and have kept it off over the following 6 months...how many SUV drivers would kill for that much weight loss?
By the way, how much does it cost for you to fill up that tank these days?
I keep forgetting to look at the gas prices.
No Other Options (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in one suburb of a small city and work in a different suburb of the small city. My commute is about 25 miles one way, 95% highway, which burns about 1 gallon of fuel.
Walking or cycling are not options, neither is public transportation (doesn't go where I go).
The only other option is car pooling, which is nearly impossible with a variable schedule including meetings at other locations that require a drive, picking up kids at day care, etc.
There's also a growing trend here in the states of people moving further away from cities into rural farming areas.
So keep in mind that some Americans have vastly different circumstances. That isn't an excuse to drive some monstrosity that gets 10 MPG though.
Re:Fine, then (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't the point of all this that you save money on gas? Why should your employer buy you a computer so that you can save money?? It's like if your employer says, "on friday you can wear jeans to work if you want to but obviously you don't have to." And then you cross your arms and stomp your feet and say, "FINE, THEN YOU BUY ME A PAIR OF JEANS!"
Uh no, if you don't want to do it then that's cool. Have fun driving to work.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:High! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:New Policy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:High! (Score:1, Insightful)
The UK government is (IMO) unreasonably taxing fuel. It's ridiculous.. no.. it's insane that 70% of the price of fuel (let alone any product) is tax.
How out-of-touch are politicians over there anyway? What exactly is done with all that tax revenue? It it burnt? Use to buy more speed cameras? What is the government wasting their tax revenue on? For a commodity that most of the rest of the civilised world has managed to keep affordable to it's citizens, high energy costs are seriously retarded.
(And I want to punch the next person who doesn't want a windfarm built because it "spoils the view" from their house - as has happened a lot in the UK).
And don't whine about pollutants being the cause of gasoline tax - in 10 years when the hydrogen economy takes off, it will be a moot point. But I bet you $10 that retarded politicians in the UK will probably still want to tax it like crazy "because that's what we used to do" and they've come to rely on gasoline taxes. Similarly if telecommuting ever takes off - they'll try to tax it to "make up for lost transportation fuel revenue".
The UK is an expensive, depressing red-tape-strangled armpit of a country. I'm so glad I left it.
Re:High! (Score:3, Insightful)